ghoti

Motivation is one ingredient to learning any language

Just finished participating in a four-person panel talk about learning Japanese. Here are some points of commonality among panelists: regularity of study motviation through some interest in the target language’s culture enjoying the learning (relates to #2) authentic material or authentic situations For me learning is like being the anthropologist Levi-Strauss: you emmerse yourself in…
Wait for the full Microsoft Surface with Windows 8

Apparently the released version of the Microsoft Surface version this week isn’t the full version. The version now is more like a tablet (example: Apple iPad) with an app store. This means it cannot do productivity stuff yet. But according to this video the 2013 version will be running Windows 8 (think next version of…
Body language and changing your behaviour

Body language is known to tell you a lot about a person. In a reversal in thinking Amy Cuddy in this TED presentation talks about how controlling or changing your body language can change your behaviour and frame of mind. Time for my big stretch … if you get what I mean.
No ham in hamburger

Firstly, the patty in hamburgers are made from ground beef. So definitely no ham there. But more importantly the term ‘hamburger’ refers to people from Hamburg in Germany (like ‘Londoner’) from whom this dish is supposed to have come from. ‘Burg’ in old German means ‘castle’. The ‘Ham’ in Hamburg is still in dispute. Ham…
Aris Venetikidis on maps in the brain

Here is a nice talk on how we map out our world in terms of getting from Point A to Point B. The key to making sense of things is simplification. Firstly, we represent getting somewhere by a series of landmarks. Secondly, no matter how windy a route is from two points our brains represent…
Some thoughts on the numbering system of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

There are two “facets” to the numbering system of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. One is to show the logical importance the comments to propositions/comments. The other is to show to which of the propositions/comments are they a comment of. Two “problems” immediately come to mind when I look at the system: In certain parts the less important…
A metaphor …

This was a random anonymous quote for me from the WordPress team: “A metaphor is like a simile.” As a metaphor scholar I rather like it. But I wonder are my blogs being turned into a corpus database for their purposes?
Cinema and academic research

I have a love-hate relationship with movies. Some days I hate it to the max. The pointlessness and waste-of-time productions that consists of most films. Then some days I love it when I come across a great piece of cinema. One of my favourite films Kinema no Tenchi (The World of Cinema) is directed by…
No Egg in Eggplant

Of course there is no egg in eggplant. Apparently the name comes from a white egg-shaped variety cultivated by 18th century Europeans. More interesting is the original name ‘aubergine’ which (according to Concise Oxford Dictionary) has its roots from Arabic and therefore the route (no pun intended, again) through which it made its way into…
English is a crazy language

I am going to have a great time analysing these. There are either cognitive or historical bases for all of these I am sure.